


Bang Bang Kiss Kiss

by TheSpiderThatKnowsThePlan



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Boys Kissing, Fights, Happy Ending, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:01:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23760520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpiderThatKnowsThePlan/pseuds/TheSpiderThatKnowsThePlan
Summary: Patrick is being a total douche, and Pete should know why, but he doesn't.PROMPT: "Right now, I don't know if I want to kiss you or shove you off a bridge." "Can I pick?"
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Comments: 5
Kudos: 40





	Bang Bang Kiss Kiss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heartsliesnpeterick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartsliesnpeterick/gifts).



“Shit,” Patrick muttered, squinting at his laptop screen at the kitchen table. 

Pete frowned at him from the breakfast bar. “What’s up?” 

Patrick rubbed his eyes with the fingers of one hand. “First of all, I have to stop taking up your offers for dinner and movies. It always ends up with me just shy of making friends with your toilet because you keep pouring me good Redbreast, and then pouring me into the guest room.” 

“Is it so bad that I never want you to leave?” Pete asked faux-innocently. 

“Second of all,” the younger man went on, undeterred, “is that the label wants us to finish the album by the end of the month, and I hate being pushed to be creative.” 

Pete came around the counter and gave Patrick a hug from behind. “Awww, my poor li’l control freak,” he crooned in Patrick’s ear, making him squirm a little. “I know how you hate being told what to do. Want me to make it all better?” he mocked. He nuzzled his cheek against one of Patrick’s soft, gingery sideburns. 

“Fuck off,” Patrick replied, pushing Pete off of him, though there wasn’t much heat behind it. He felt his face flushing, and he scrubbed his hands over it to prevent Pete from noticing. 

“Well, what else were you doing today?” Pete asked tentatively. He really didn’t want Patrick pissed at him. (Or, maybe he did, but some tiny remnant of his admittedly shoddy survival instincts told him that now was not the time to awaken that particular beast.) “You have some decent tracks laid down. I bet you could make them into real songs.” He brightened up. “Like The Blue Fairy from Pinocchio! But with songs!” 

The younger man sighed heavily. “Yeah, especially where the songs go to Fantasy Island and get turned into donkeys by assholes who just want to profit off them.” 

“That’s _Pleasure_ Island, Tricky,” Pete corrects, “and I think we’ve misbehaved enough in the last couple of weeks to merit that.” His tone was appraising, as if earning punishment from the Powers That Be were somehow a good thing. 

Patrick groaned. “Nothing is bad enough to merit the twisting of art into commodity, Pete, and by the way, we’ve done absolutely nothing untoward.” 

This was true. Pete thought of the night before. They’d been on the couch, empty pizza box on the table in front of them, one of the original Star Wars trilogy playing as background noise, and they’d been laughing over something one of them had said. Damned if Pete could remember now, but he wished with all his might that he could, if only to have a key to that unguarded place where Patrick laughed loudly and his face turned a lovely shade of pink. 

And then, Patrick had looked at him with something in his eyes, something like... hope? Attraction? His gaze had been a bit unfocused, so Pete wasn’t about to take chances with a precious commodity as Patrick Fucking Stumph ( _patent pending_ ), his best friend in the whole universe, and keeper of his badly bruised heart. But, oh, how he’d wanted that something more to be there, even when he couldn’t bring himself to believe such a wondrous being as Patrick could ever love a fuck-up like him. 

_Whiskey_ , he told himself dejectedly. _It was just **whiskey** in his eyes._

So Pete had just smiled and said maybe Patrick should hit the rack, and Patrick had sheepishly agreed. Now, though, Pete held that moment in his proverbial pocket while Patrick sat, hungover and irritable at his kitchen table, and just felt sad that he’d missed what had probably been a golden opportunity. 

He needed to break the tension and silence in the room. 

“Maybe we should just head into the studio, then, and see if we can get any work done?” Pete offered. 

Patrick didn’t answer right away, He just rested his chin on the heel of his hand, stared at the email from corporate, and stewed. Pete didn’t dare push when he was like this. Getting Patrick a little mad was one thing; getting him to walk out of Pete’s kitchen and not speak to him for three days was something else entirely. He stirred his coffee and waited. 

Finally, Patrick turned and gave Pete a stink-eye over his shoulder. “If we do go to the studio and work, does that mean you’ll be required to stop making that noise?” 

Pete looked down at the spoon in the porcelain coffee cup, finally registered the _tink-tink-tink_ of his stirring, and stopped. “I’ll stop anyway, just because you asked me so nicely,” he said coyly. 

Patrick closed his eyes and breathed out forcefully, a clear sign he was controlling his temper. Pete couldn’t help the way his chest tingled and heartbeat picked up just a little bit at the thought. 

“Let’s just get cleaned up and go,” Patrick finally said, his tone very even. 

Hot showers are a miraculous thing sometimes, and the pair met back up in Pete’s living room feeling slightly more human for having cleaned up. Patrick grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and then they were off. 

Neither of them spoke during the car ride. Pete felt restless, and he couldn’t find a decent song on the radio. He tuned up and down the dial, frustration growing, until Patrick grabbed his wrist. 

“Just turn it off,” he said gently. Pete did and found he felt better for not having the noise. He glanced over at Patrick and gave a small smile, but Patrick didn’t seem to see it. Pete sighed and just drove on. 

They stopped for coffee, on Pete, for which Patrick only mumbled “thanks” without looking at him. Pete just shrugged a shoulder in response. Nothing was going to rid the younger man of the dark cloud over his head, it seemed. 

They weren’t back in the car thirty seconds before Patrick snapped, “Look out!” Pete slammed on the brakes and saw a car coming from the driver side while he was trying to back out. It had stopped, but it was directly in his blind spot. Patrick started cursing, and Pete looked over to see his coffee almost entirely in his lap. 

“Let me get you another one,” Pete said hurriedly as he pulled back into the parking space. When Patrick didn’t reply, only shook his free hand in annoyance (flinging coffee onto the passenger side window, which Pete graciously ignored), Pete jumped out of the car and ran back into the shop. He came back out a couple of minutes later with a new coffee and a giant stack of paper napkins. He handed both over to Patrick before getting in, looking all around in a truly paranoid fashion, and then finally backing out. 

Once they arrived at the studio, Pete ran to get ahead of Patrick so he could hold the door for him, like a true gentleman. Unfortunately, he stepped on his untied shoelace, which almost sent him and Patrick tumbling to the pavement. 

Patrick held his coffee away from his body and glared at Pete. “Dude, what the fuck?” he bit out through clenched teeth. “Would you fucking relax?” 

Pete held back from firing something back like _you’re one to talk_ , and thus escalating an already tense situation. He just held the door open, his eyes cast downward, while Patrick stalked past him. 

Things didn’t get much better once they started working. Patrick leafed through Pete’s notebooks, humming and making notes, while Pete just watched anxiously. This part always made him nervous, but with the mood Patrick was in today, Pete was pretty much at DEFCON 1. 

“What?” Patrick snapped, slamming the notebook shut and staring daggers at the older man. 

“Nothing,” Pete said as casually as he could manage, and then he got up and left the booth. He went outside, shook a cigarette loose from the battered pack, lit up, and inhaled deeply. He'd hoped that a moment by himself (with some much-needed nicotine) would help him relax a little, but it just left him with a steady onslaught of self-loathing. 

_Patrick hates me. And who could blame him? I’m such a needy asshole. I hold him back. He could do anything, be anything, with all that fucking God-given TALENT, and he has to put up with King Fuck-Up. I’ll leech all the good out of him until there’s nothing left. I’m doing it already. Look at him right now. He can’t stand being my friend, let alone trying to work with me. He’d probably say he’s doing all the work of taking all the sewage in my brain and making it something remotely useful. And he is._

He was nearly down to the filter already. He crushed it out with his sneaker and went back inside. 

Patrick was composing now, which was usually one of Pete’s favorite things to watch. This time, though, he could see Patrick’s shoulders hunched up tightly, practically touching his headphones while he raised and lowered levels, took one ear off to hum something over the track, then put them back and continued fiddling with GarageBand. 

Pete slinked back onto the couch as quietly as he could. Patrick didn’t acknowledge him or make any sign he’d heard him, and he wasn’t sure whether that went in the plus or minus column. He just chewed his fingernails and waited. 

When Patrick pulled an ear out and began singing a catchy melody, Pete felt electricity crackle in his chest at the sound, but he paused when he heard the words together with the notes. 

_They say quitters never win  
But we’re at the helm of a sinking ship   
There’s a world outside of my front door   
That gets off on being down _

Pete would never have been able to put his finger on what he didn’t like, but he just knew instinctively that it felt _wrong_. 

Before Patrick could cover his ear back up (and before Pete could chicken out), Pete said, “Um, ‘Trick?” 

He heard the sigh as much as saw it in Patrick’s shoulders before he answered without turning around, “What?” 

“I’m not sure that lyric is quite right.” He was hedging, of course. He knew it down to his bones, but he also knew that Patrick needed to be handled with kid gloves right now. 

Patrick swiveled in the chair and faced him, his expression flat and guarded. Pete knew for a fact this meant trouble, but he waited. “And why is that?” he asked evenly. 

Pete knew this meant even bigger trouble, but it was too late now. _In for a penny, in for a pound._

“I can’t explain it, but something just isn’t quite... there.” He stood and started pacing, the new anxiety over getting the words perfect suddenly overriding his previous anxiety. “It’s close, I know it, but--”

“They’re _your_ words, Pete,” the singer reminded him. 

Pete gave him a dismissive wave of his hand. “I know, I know,” he said impatiently. He started saying the words to himself in a low half-whisper, willing the right idea to come. He distantly heard the creak of the chair as Patrick stood, and he knew things were steadily getting worse, but what he wanted was _right there, so close..._ “I got it!” he exclaimed. Patrick jumped and fell back into the chair, his teeth clacking together loudly. The chair then rolled back into the board with a thud. “Oh, sorry. Anyway...” 

Patrick turned his face up to meet Pete’s, eyes blazing. “Alright, then, dazzle me.” 

Not really being any kind of singer, Pete just said the words: 

_They say quitters never win  
But **we walk the plank** on a sinking ship   
There’s a world outside of my front door   
That gets off on being down _

“How is that any better than what I just put together?” the younger man challenged, rising from the chair again. 

“I don’t know. It just is,” Pete said with a shrug. “It’s like with anything, ‘Trick. I can only tell you what I feel.” 

Patrick snorted. “That’s rich.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Pete folded his arms and faced his best friend down. He’d had just about enough of this attitude for one day. 

“Forget it,” Patrick said, turning back to the computer. “We’ll just do it your way, like we always do.” 

Pete grabbed his shoulder. “No. If you have something to say, fucking say it.” 

“Why?” Patrick asked. “Why does it matter what I say? Whatever you say goes.” He turned away again. Under his breath, he muttered, “Or whatever you don’t say.” 

“Jesus Christ, what is your fucking problem?” Pete yelled, throwing his arms up in frustration. “I suggested changing a handful of words!” 

Patrick sat down again and spun back to his laptop. “Were you that desperate to make sure you got a songwriting credit, Pete? Don’t worry. No one will ever forget that this is _your_ band. I’m just here because you don’t know dick about actual music.” 

Pete chewed the inside of his cheek for half a second, then just blurted out, “Yeah, and without me, you’d still be jacking off in your bedroom back in Glenview, and no one would have ever even fucking _heard_ of you!” 

In a blur of motion, Patrick was up and out of the chair. He whirled around, and before Pete could react, he punched the older man square in the jaw. The empty chair went rolling back across the booth and rattled against the opposite wall. 

Pete went down with a cry of surprise and pain, but remained on his hands and knees. He looked back over his shoulder at his assailant, his best friend, the man he loved more than anything in the world. _Hated_ more than anything in the world. Whatever. They were one and the same right then. He stood up, held his chin between his fingers, and moved his jaw back and forth experimentally. It stung, but he’d had a lot worse. 

“You are unbelievable,” Patrick said softly, a fine tremor in his voice. He swallowed hard, and Pete couldn’t help watching his Adam’s apple while he did. 

With a barking laugh, Pete threw back, “Oh, I’m unbelievable? You’ve been a complete dick to me all fucking day, when I didn’t even do anything to you!” 

Patrick wiped one eye with the heel of his hand and mumbled, “That’s right. You didn’t.” 

“You are so insufferable. Right now, I don’t know whether I want to kiss you, or shove you off a bridge.” He moved closer to the smaller man, intending to shove him backward, but as soon as he raised his hands, Patrick grabbed one wrist, and hard. 

“Do I get to pick?” Patrick growled.

“What?” Pete managed, but then Patrick was kissing him, and all the other questions, words, and thoughts were gone. When they pulled apart, he looked at the younger man. “What was that?”

“What you should have done last night,” Patrick answered.

Pete blinked a few times as comprehension slowly dawned. “Is that why you’ve been such a complete and utter bitch today?”

Patrick shrugged and smirked. “Well, that and the hangover.”

“Why didn’t you just say something?” Pete asked.

“I think I just did,” Patrick replied, and kissed him again.


End file.
